Banning under-16s from social media won’t work – here’s what will
Wednesday, 29 April 2026
Vivien Maidaborn is chief executive of InternetNZ-Ipurangi Aotearoa.
OPINION: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said his Government would “die trying” to get under-16s off social media. We have protections for kids in the physical world, Luxon said, and we need them in the virtual world too.
He’s right. With our day-to-day lives now inextricably entwined with the internet, we need to do more to minimise the harm being caused to children and young people in their use of some online platforms. Very few would disagree, which is why in an election year – with a promise to get a bill before Parliament again by November – it’s such a smart policy to “die trying” for.
The problem is, it won’t work. Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s has been in place since December and, while tens of thousands of accounts linked to young people have been removed, more than half of 12-15-year-olds still have access to the platforms.
Of those young people using restricted sites, 70% said they found it easy to get around the ban. The use of VPNs (virtual private networks) soared since the law came into effect.
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The compliance issues mean that Australia’s digital regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, has now moved into enforcement mode – potentially picking what could be years-long legal battles with multinational, multli-billion-dollar tech giants who consider national governments nothing more than a flea on their backs.
The new ban is not only ineffective, it creates other issues. Australia’s under-16s law requires platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent access by age-restricted users, and in order to do so, platforms themselves are able to determine which age verification method. Virtually all of them have flaws, loopholes and bring up important questions about privacy and data protection.
This new layer of identity verification also creates “honeypots” for hackers – a large swathe of sensitive data all stored in one place makes cyberattacks far more tempting and identity theft easier. It‘s already happening. Late last year 70,000 Discord users’ ID photos, collected for age verification, were exposed in a hack.
Any new digital regulations should protect user data from harmful practices, give us more control over our data and who has access to it – not require us to give them more.
My role at InternetNZ is to lead the organisation in its stewardship of the .nz domain name space, but also to advocate for an internet that benefits all New Zealanders.
Young people in Aotearoa being exploited by social media algorithms are not benefiting from the current regulatory settings, and won’t benefit from the proposed under-16s ban. The harm being experienced by young people from these platforms is by design, and there is currently no accountability for that.
Platforms use neurological exploitation design practices that hijack adolescent brains through, for example, slot machine-style variable rewards. They also engage in predatory data extraction through real-time data auctions. They are designed to keep users engaged for as long as possible. Something needs to change.
But do we want the government to do something about this issue that is token, won’t work, and is mainly about being seen to do something more than nothing – or do we want to start building a systemic approach where many actions, levers and support are possible?
As Australia’s well-intentioned attempt to stop under-16s from accessing social media illustrates, a single, reactive law will not create the change and protection we all want for young people. Laws like this are a band-aid, and address a symptom, but not the disease. Until we regulate the underlying practices of these platforms, we are merely building digital fences that tech-savvy youth will inevitably bypass.
The fact not often mentioned in the discussion of Australia’s under-16s social media ban is that the country has had an independent digital regulator in place for a decade already.
The aforementioned eSafety Commissioner was initially established to improve the safety of children online and protect them from cyberbullying, but its remit was soon expanded to include all Australians and it has a wide range of regulatory levers it can pull to achieve its aims.
New Zealand’s digital platform regulation is not keeping pace with the internet, or even our peers in other countries. What we have is a patchwork of legislation that addresses particular issues, some of which was drafted before New Zealand connected to the internet, and no-one has regulatory oversight or is planning ahead.
So both because it’s about time and because we need it for the future, let’s get an independent, digital regulator in place to provide evidence-based solutions for these complex problems.
To be effective, this regulator must have cross-agency authority, real-time audit powers to investigate platforms, and active Māori advisory representation.
It needs powers to mandate proactive approaches to digital safety, rather than retrofit with vague terms like “reasonable steps”.
It could implement a platform levy on tech giants, because even laws with penalties in the millions are a drop in the bucket to these companies. This levy could fund the regulator itself, alongside local digital literacy campaigns and independent research.
It could enforce privacy-preserving data erasure laws, forcing platforms to delete minors’ data upon request and restricting the exploitative profiling that drives these harms.
A well-resourced, independent digital regulator isn’t the answer to all our internet-related woes– but it would give us a fighting chance at minimising some of the safety issues that young people are facing in the online world they are inheriting, not just on social media, but across the internet.